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Karajia and Environment Award for Children’s Literature 2024 winners announced

Monday, 14 October 2024   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The Wilderness Society has announced the winners of the 2024 Environment Award for Children’s Literature and the Karajia Award for First Nations children’s storytelling.

Winners in each category are:

Environment Award for Children’s Literature

Fiction

  • The Littlest Penguin and the Phillip Island Penguin Parade (The Penguin Foundation & Jedda Robaard, Puffin)

Nonfiction

  • The Trees (Victor Steffensen & Sandra Steffensen, HG Explore)

Picture fiction

  • Hope Is the Thing (Johanna Bell & Erica Wagner, A&U Children’s)

Karajia Award for Children’s Literature

Nonfiction

  • In My Blood It Runs (Dujuan Hoosan, Margaret Anderson, Carol Turner & Blak Douglas, Macmillan)

Picture fiction

  • Nedingar: Ancestors (Isobel Bevis & Leanne Zilm, Fremantle Press).

The winners were chosen from shortlists announced in June. Organisers said the winners ‘tackle some of the biggest issues facing our planet and encourage a love and wonderment of nature in young readers’.

Established 30 years ago, the Environment Award for Children’s Literature ‘shines a light on books written for children that promote a love of and care for nature’, while the Karajia Award was established in 2022 to recognise ‘a book that celebrates a connection to Country and stories exploring land, community, culture and language by a First Nations author or illustrator’.

Judges this year for the Environment Award included Australian conservation biologist Kylie Soanes, actor and Playschool presenter Zindzi Okenyo, and 2023 Environment Award for Children’s Literature winner Jess McGeachin; while previously shortlisted author Jasmine Seymour, educator Danae Coots, and academic and author Amy Thunig formed the judging panel for the 2024 Karajia Award.

Wilderness Society CEO Matt Brennan said: ‘Books we read as children shape who we become. Stories can spark our greatest ideas and adventures, change the way we experience the world, and even help us establish our values. It is through storytelling that big, often overwhelming, concepts like the climate crisis or habitat destruction can be understood and appreciated. That’s why the Wilderness Society’s Karajia and Environment Awards for Children’s Literature are so important—they celebrate authors and illustrators who share stories that will shape the next generation.’

More information about the awards is available on the Wilderness Society website.

 

Category: Awards Local news